49ers' Martin must prove he can thrive amid intimidation

Updated 11:46 pm, Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Head coach Jim Harbaugh might have stuck up for Martin, but ultimately the tackle must play well.

Head coach Jim Harbaugh might have stuck up for Martin, but ultimately the tackle must play well.

Photo: Beck Diefenbach, For The Chronicle

49ers' Martin must prove he can thrive amid intimidation

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Could it be that the 49ers are just cooler than all the other NFL teams?

The Niners have the most interesting and off-the-wall coach, whom they considered trading. They have the league's first hip-hop rock star quarterback. And now they've traded for a guy sure to be the most carefully watched and analyzed second-string (maybe third or fourth string) tackle in the league.

Trading for Martin was a small but excellent - and meaningful - move by the 49ers. Credit to general manager Trent Baalke, head coach Jim Harbaugh and boss Jed York. Team effort! Why, it seems like only yesterday that these three were locked in a backroom, three-way mortal squabble over power, pride and money.

Credit Baalke with being smart enough to pick up an O-lineman with starting experience for next to nothing.

Credit Harbaugh with having Martin's back ever since he walked away from the Dolphins and from football last season. And credit Harbaugh with having shaped a locker room that can handle what some see as a potentially destructive distraction.

Usually when people talk about distractions, they're referring to media attention and public scrutiny that can interfere with team focus. This goes deeper.

The Martin-Incognito case is something that not only provided juicy debate fodder for fans and media, but it divided the NFL at the grassroots level. Even in the locker room of Martin's former team, the Dolphins, there seems to be no clear consensus on whether the big storm was caused by the crude taunting and bullying of the out-of-control Incognito, or by Martin's wimpiness.

Is Martin a courageous whistle-blower, or a sellout who brought embarrassment on his team and league because he wasn't tough enough to handle a little garden-variety locker-room banter?

There is potential for disagreement among 49ers players. They now present a united front in support of Martin, but who knows how many 49ers see Martin as a guy who wimped out, ratted out and isn't worthy of pulling on a set of shoulder pads?

Also, Martin could be a lightning rod for fan abuse wherever the 49ers go. To many, the NFL is our gladiator sport, and what gladiator ran away from the Roman Colosseum because the lions were being too crude?

The NFL is, at its core, a glorification of bullying. The idea is to bully the other team until it breaks. If you can single out one weak guy, you concentrate your bullying on him. And you put a cherry on top of the intimidation by taunting and crowing. Right, Richard Sherman?

Many fans, and at least some players, feel that bullying should carry into the locker room, a useful tool to weed out the lily-livered. Rules of etiquette and standards of human interaction have no place here. This is the last frontier of guys.

Harbaugh would seem a likely candidate to champion that caveman side of the philosophical divide. He survived 15 NFL seasons as a sub-superstar, and he never misses a chance to salute the toughness and manliness of his 49ers.

But Harbaugh is big on team unity, on teammates supporting teammates. And he knows Martin well, having coached him at Stanford. Besides, Harbaugh, through his dad and going back to Woody Hayes, is a disciple of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Had Emerson been consulted, surely he would have said, in 5,000 big words, "Trade for the guy."

Harbaugh likes players who arrive with something to prove. It was his idea to place above each locker stall a plate with the player's high-school scouting rating. Walk around the team room and you see a bunch of losers and nobodies who fought their way into the NFL - to hell with the experts and critics.

Martin's got something to prove - that he can overcome a traumatic exposure to toxic teammates and national ridicule, that he can withstand the heat you get even in a "friendly" locker room ... and that he can play football.

That last part will be the key. The 49ers didn't trade for Martin in order to show the world how cool and highly evolved this team is. They got him with the expectation that he would be the bully, every Sunday afternoon.

If Martin does that, the 49ers and their fans can say, "Kiss our grass, Seattle - all 12 of you."

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